The INFO Project Blog

Global health may not often make it into the headlines, but there are an ever-growing number of people and institutions that are sharing their ideas and experiences in this field from blog platforms on the web. We stumbled across a few great posts in the last week, which happened to focus on the role that media can play in HIV prevention:

The blog Technology, Health & Development had a very interesting entry about a new animation-based curriculum for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, developed at Stanford University. Initial versions of both their Indian and Asian prototypes are available for viewing.

The Foreign Policy Public Health blog had an interesting post on a new mass-media campaign, also implemented in India, which aims to encourage people (and men in particular) to talk more openly about sex and condoms. You can see an advert and read more about it on the BBC.

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On a devoted YouTube channel, BioMed Central authors talk about how open source publishing has changed the way they publish and communicate with collaborators and the public. The publishers of 184 peer-reviewed open-access journals, unsurprisingly, predict further openness and public sharing of data.

Click to watch BioMed Central YouTube channel

Hakia is a new social searching tool that, in the eyes of some trend watchers, is making Google look “old school.”

After listening to the BBC World Service Health Check’s broadcast from Bangladesh, focusing on maternal health and doctor scarcity in this flood-prone nation, I was curious to see what its maternal mortality rate was. So I googled–oops, searched–for “bangladesh maternal mortality rate.” This is what it told me:

The following should help: Bangladesh’s maternal mortality rate - at 440 deaths per 100,000 live births - is a leading cause of death. See this page. …See the hakia gallery for Bangladesh

It then listed 10 resources with an answer to this query, highlighting the relevant passage.

Clicking through to the Hakia gallery for Bangladesh took me to a list of resources divided into tabs like Country Profile, Culture, and Cities.

A parallel search on Google did not answer the question, but the first hit, a UNICEF country profile, told me that Hakia’s statistics might be outdated. The adjusted rate (1995-2005) of MM is 380 per 100,000 births.

The “social” part of Hakia isn’t actually the conversational responses, which come from Ask.com, or the handy-highlighting (called Hakia ScoopBar), it’s checking to see who else searches like you.

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HIFA2015′s PDAs-for-development discussion continues with a energetic post from a Malaysian medical professor about generating power for your laptop via your morning workout.

Dear Sina,

The advantage of *mobilephones* lies in their present population penetration which is substantial. Also the general population may not appreciate switching from more portable to less portable devices. In all probability the future mobile phone shall develop present day laptop functionality (PDA etc are approximations that are inching closer). Once that happens (and the present day basic mobile phone is phased out) it may effectively bridge the digital divide between the present day mobile savvy but computer illiterate have nots and the computer literate haves.

I agree on the power consumption front and perhaps the need is acute for devices that can be charged by human muscle power (as in the OLPC laptops that may be charged on hand crank or even pedalling). http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_and_power

I would need to momentarily shift the focus from rural to an urban office scenario with overworked executives, slumped on their desks, staring bleary eyed into their computers. A human muscle powered computer could change this scenario into a dynamic environment where people work and charge their computers on a connected tread mill (the present tread mill monitor is more like a PC monitor that one could work with even while exercising…only needs a keyboard).

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I won’t lie. I take the internet for granted. I can not count the number of times I use it, both at work and at home. I check my Treo while walking my dog. Will I ever be able to live without the internet? Prior to learning about the eGranary Digital Library through a presentation the director Cliff Missen gave at the quarterly Health Information Publications Network meeting, my answer would have been no. However, I am now aware that thousands of people across the developing world are accessing over 10 million high quality resources without the use of the internet.

eGranary is a platform that allows articles and information to be stored on a local area network (LAN), allowing users connected to that network to access documents, even if they are not connected to the internet. Users are able to access items much more quickly through eGranary than if they were to use the internet. Bandwidth is expensive in much of the developing world, and currently those who are lucky enough to have access to the internet are paying very large sums of money for slow access.

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